Our research-creation draws on the MGAM model (Marionette – Golem – Actor – Mask), a way of exploring the different forms that digital doubles can take. This model describes four regimes: the marionette, which obeys external gestures; the golem, animated by its own algorithms; the actor, in which a human body is embodied in a virtual figure; and the mask, a surface for expression and the projection of identity. We work together to make these four poles interact, seeking what they reveal about our relationship to images and technologies.
In our practice, it is not only about building technical tools, but about creating aesthetic situations in which a digital entity becomes a partner in perception, memory, and imagination. It is a way of engaging motion capture, artificial intelligence, algorithmic generation, or virtual reality to experience what it means to “inhabit” another form of presence. The MGAM model helps us connect these experiments to a broader reflection on identity and alterity.
It is within this framework that the Kellynoide emerged. This digital double, born from Kelly’s body and image, is at once portrait, marionette, actress, and at times autonomous creature. Together, we have presented it in exhibitions, performances, and virtual environments, as a shifting figure embodying the transitions between the poles of the MGAM model. For us, the Kellynoide becomes both a playground and a shared field of research: a hybrid entity blurring the boundaries between the living and the digital, the intimate and the public, the human and the artificial.